The view of Time that the hardline Israeli government is not able to offer any reasonable compromise in the pursuit of
peace is again reflected in the above article. Again we hear that:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have his own problems with such an agreement.
The coalition of parties even more hawkish than his is unlikely to accept the terms of any plausible
final-status agreement.

" You raise a question
about the security
forces or the settlements
and you are suddenly being
compared to a Holocaust
denier. "

This quotation bears the caption:

a Detroit teacher, on why he avoids the subject of Israel at family gatherings; liberal Jews frustrated at being
labeled anti-Israel for opposing certain of the country's policies are beginning to speak out.

The quotation is rather extreme and the caption implies that his view is representative of American Jews. Are people who criticize settlements really being compared to Holocaust deniers? Are massive numbers of liberal Jews really starting “to speak out” against Israel? Without any evidence of this trend, it is wrong for Time publish this as a representative quotation.

A major story on the relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is riddled with biased language. Netanyahu is portrayed as a “macho and proud commando” while Obama is the thoughtful conciliator who is simply trying to
get away from ideology in order to bring peace to the region. According to Time “Obama reaches out to rivals; Netanyahu
confronts them.” Yet one could argue that in building his coalition, Netanyahu has had to reach out to his rivals, while in the
U.S. “confrontation” accurately describes Obama's approach to Republicans in Congress.
Three times, Time mentions the Gaza flotilla as a “Deadly Israeli raid on Gaza bound aid ships” without further detail. On one instance, Time implies that the raid undermined Israel's relationship with the U.S.

And the violent confrontation on the Gaza-bound aid ships shows how fragile any improvement in relations will remain.

It is a dubious claim. The raid actually had no impact on U.S.-Israeli relations. But an even worse accusation (made without
any context) is that:

Yet Time does not mention that even during the violent Palestinian uprising that included scores of suicide bombings,
Netanyahu signed two major agreements (Hebron Accords and Wye River Memorandum) that included major Israeli
concessions. Yet according to Time, it was Netanyahu rather than Palestinian terrorism and rejectionism that thwarted
Clinton's peace efforts.
Another section of the article makes Jewish purchase of land in Jerusalem out to be something
sinister as it refers to the

appropriation of Arab land in East Jerusalem by Jewish activists.

Why "appropriation?" Time neglects to mention that homes are being purchased or in other cases, illegal squatters
are being evicted. But Time goes further when it discusses the legal purchase of a dilapidated and uninhabited
building in Jerusalem that was to be renovated as an apartment building:

Obama's predecessors had mostly looked the other way at Israeli eviction, demolition and construction in land
occupied during the 1967 war, even though such activities violated the fourth Geneva Convention, which bars
settlement activity in conquered territory.

This is the reporter's personal opinion – not an accepted fact. Numerous international law experts have said that the Geneva Convention does not apply to stateless land that was won in a defensive war. While it is appropriate for Time to report on the reactions of the Obama Administration to the case, it is not appropriate for them to add to the story with a factually inaccurate statement.

Time refutes the accusation that Obama is anti-Semitic (that it says many Israelis share) by saying:

Powerful Jewish families in Chicago had helped organize, fund and run his election campaign, they noted, and
Michelle Obama's cousin was one of the most influential African-American rabbis in the U.S.

Time has again invoked the specter of Jewish influence over the U.S. government. And lauding Michelle Obama's cousin for being "One of the most influential African American Rabbis in the U.S." is a bit misleading when in 2008, there were only 28 such Rabbis.

As the convoy of ships of the "Free Gaza" movement headed to Israel to confront the Israeli Navy, Time was already
repeating the propaganda message of those aboard. In fact, the entire article above reads like a press release issued
by Israel's critics:

Israel's P.R machine has gone into overdrive this week to counter the impact of a nine-ship flotilla en
route from Turkey that is carrying 10,000 tons of medicine and construction materials and 700 pro-Palestinian
activists to the besieged Gaza Strip. Israel has vowed to stop the ships from reaching their destination, painting
the flotilla -a civil society initiative that has the support of the Turkish government — as a "provocation."

Why are Israeli communications efforts labeled P.R. But not those of its enemies?
Why does Time not point out
that the amounts carried in the ships was equal to what Israel allows into Gaza every two days?

Were Time reporters unaware of the connection between the flotilla's organizers, the ICH, and terrorism?
Apparently not because of the description of the IHH as a “civil society initiative.”
How did Time know that
those aboard were "activists?"

In fact, on the basis of this article, one has to wonder whether Time made any attempts to find out factual information
about the fleet.

Time even admits why they do not accept information from Israel:

The problem facing the Israeli P.R. effort is that few neutrals are likely to accept Israel's bona fides as a champion
of the welfare of ordinary Gazans. Not after a three-year siege whose goal has been to squeeze the civilian
population in hopes that it would overthrow Hamas - and a January 2009 military operation in response to Palestinian
rocket fire that left more than 1,200 Palestinians dead, many of them civilians.

No mention of the 6,000 rocket attacks against Israel that caused the conflict. Again Time relies on the dubious
casualty statistics, including “many of them civilians,” that have been proven inaccurate.

Finally, the flotilla organizers are compared to anti-apartheid protestors who forced change on South Africa:

The civil society movements that have contributed to this and previous relief protest efforts hark back, in style, to
the grass-roots origins of the anti-apartheid movement that emerged in Europe, and eventually the U.S., in the 1980s -
which started out with small citizen initiatives to pressure South Africa over the fate of its black population but evolved
into mass public pressure, forcing Western governments to impose sanctions on Pretoria.

It is important to keep in mind that this article appeared at the end of May before the flotilla encountered the Israeli Navy.

Time wants to make sure that the image of the passengers aboard the ships is of peaceful activists, hence the
selection of this Quotes of the Day. The fact that is was proven to be 100% inaccurate by videos of the passengers
singing about how they would go to their deaths fighting Israelis, as well as the weapons that they carried.

The theme that Time will use again and again in its coverage of the flotilla incident
is one of Israeli disproportionate force against innocent civilians. From images to
wording to decisions on what to cover and what to ignore, Time presents its
often erroneous editorial view as fact.

The article starts with a picture of an Israeli naval ship closing in on a small boat. The caption reads:

An Israeli military vessel escorts one of the boats in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla to the southern Israeli navy port of
Ashdod on May 31, 2010, after navy seals stormed a boat carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip against an
Israeli blockade, in a raid which killed several passengers.

The only ship on which there was violence was the huge Mavi Marmara. Using a picture of a much smaller (and obviously
harmless) ship over a caption which refers to the killing of passengers is a way to begin coverage with the concept of
disproportionate Israeli force. This theme is reinforced when the article's first quote is from a passenger who
said:

Greta Berlin, an American founder of the Free Gaza Movement and one of the organizers of the flotilla who was
on another ship, said the commandos hit the deck firing indiscriminately at unarmed civilians.
"We never thought
Israel would be stupid enough to kill 10 people and wound at least 30," Berlin told Israel Radio.
"We are all civilians.
Every one of us is a civilian who is trying to break Israel's blockade of one and a half million Palestinians," she said.

Time presents her quotation as fact, and since it is at the very top of the article, it has much greater influence than Israeli explanations which are given much later. Time does not share with its readers Berlin's obvious bias or the fact that her
claim was proven inaccurate.